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Nearly Dozen Wild Horses Fatally Shot

MESA VERDE, CO - AUGUST 07: Wild horses are just some of the wildlife seen by visitors to Mesa Verde National Park on August 7, 2008 in Mesa Verde, Colorado. Mesa Verde, Spanish for green table, offers a spectacular look into the lives of the Ancestral Pueblo people who made it their home for over 700 years, from A.D. 600 to A.D. 1300. Today, the park protects over 4,000 known archeological sites, including 600 cliff dwellings. These sites are some of the most notable and best preserved in the United States. (Photo by Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)

File photo of wild horses. (Photo by Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)

RENO, Nev. (CBS Las Vegas/AP) — The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is investigating the shooting deaths of nearly a dozen wild horses in four separate incidents in California and Nevada since the beginning of the year.

The agency announced a $10,000 reward Monday for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the shooter or shooters.

The most recent killings involved one horse and two burros on BLM land near Black Rock Canyon in Pershing County about 150 miles northeast of Reno. They were discovered April 9.

Five days earlier, two wild horses were found shot to death in Lassen County, Calif., near the Nevada line.

Six other mustangs were killed earlier in northern Nevada — three in Eureka County in January and three in Lander County in February.

The BLM Crime Hotline is 1-800-521-6501.

These animals are wild horses in the sense that they have never been domesticated. Other species of wild horses include the Tarpan and the Przewalski’s Horse, both seen in Europe and Asia.